Robert Craddock: If there is match-fixing in rugby league it is not from players placing small multi-bets

RECENTLY I asked a leading Brisbane rugby league referee to retell an old yarn about the days when he would have a bet during a game of football.

Think Suncorp Stadium, match of the day, Sunday afternoon, the 1980s.

Think Brothers, Redcliffe, Wynnum-Manly and other BRL teams, and a sporting world far less serious than it is today.

The referee was a straight as a bush highway but for a bit of fun, when standing behind a kicker taking a conversation attempt, would say “bet you a pot (of beer) you miss it.”

Some took up the offer and the bet would be settled in the leagues club at Suncorp (then Lang Park) after the game.

It was all a bit of a lark but when the NRL integrity unit swooped last week and suspended players for the heinous crime of having bets between $5 and $60 on games, my mind wandered back to that referee and his beer bets.

Even though no money changed hands, you wonder whether his whistle would have been snatched off him for good had he done it today.

Many would argue that rugby league was a far more innocent game in the 1980s but you could also suggest the opposite – that it actually had a more worldly appreciation of the vivid line between fair fun and dodgy practice.

Rugby league officials were in such a lather in the lead-up to last week’s “betting scandal” I half expected Osama bin Laden-style footage of a group of navy SEALs bursting into David Williams pad at Manly, then leaving via a helicopter as NRL boss Dave Smith watched via a video link.

The grandiose nature of the sting and the press conference suggested we should all be grateful that we can now raise our children in a sanitised world rid of the threat of players having $10 multibets.

Thank heavens for that.

The real truth is that if there is match-fixing in rugby league, it is not players having small multi-bets. It is people investing thousands of dollars on one game in mysterious accounts.

If betting on rugby league games truly is a cancer the game is intent on eliminating, then snip off the head, not the tiny tail hairs.

The NRL has no objection to 15 of its clubs having betting sponsors and nor did they object a while back to that now infamous ad where (Williams’ team) Manly, dressed in their Centrebet jerseys, reached up and touched a Centrebet sign.

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Sports broadcasts now are cluttered with betting ads which do far more to encourage gambling than a lower grade player privately having a $10 bet on games.

There are times in rugby league when you can take peptides without being caught, give a rival crowd “the bird” and not get punished, try a spear tackle on Brent Tate and not get a heavy suspension, or create a disturbance in a bar without getting pulled into line.

But take a $2 multi-bet and that next knock at the door will be rugby league’s SWAT team.

Rugby league is not the only sport to have awkward betting moments.

A few years ago in England, a group of Pakistani cricketers were caught match fixing in a Test at Lords at the same time as the television broadcasters had a deal saying they must show the Betfair blimp once an hour.

So at the same time as the commentators were waxing on about the perils of betting in cricket, the cameras would sweep high above to the blimp which encouraged punters to have a crack.

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